No One Lives Forever took it further. The mooks discuss how the barrels are filled with imitation lava, for decorating the boss's underground lair. High explosive imitation lava.

The one that always confused me though were those ammo crates that appear in ancient monastaries, insect hives, and in subterranean complexes, hitherto undiscovered by mankind. I can only assume the ammunition served some incidental role to the ancient locust people, and it is a small coincidence that it matches my weapon's caliber. Bit of an oversight on their part, though.

At least according to DOOM, but then I suppose almost everything else in DOOM was red, especially the monsters after you'd shot them a few (dozen) times...

Hey? I thought they were green, though it's been a while since I played that.

Freechoice:And the point of this article was...? Barrels explode? Are you trying to justify the red barrel? Do you really need to?

Yeah, seems an odd thing to under over-analyse. Mind you, at least the article is aware they are over-analysing, I can't stand it when people blather on believing they have come up with a great literary interpretation revolving around writing their academic qualifications on their genital and waving them a bout, so to speak.

maninahat:No One Lives Forever took it further. The mooks discuss how the barrels are filled with imitation lava, for decorate the bosses' underground lair. High explosive imitation lava.

The one that always confused me though were those ammo crates that appear in ancient monastaries, insect hives, and in subterranean complexes, hitherto undiscovered by mankind. I can only assume the ammunition served some incidental role to the ancient locust people, and it is a small coincidence that it matches my weapon's caliber. Bit of an oversight on their part, though.

Ah NOLF, so much better than Half Life, you never get the credit you deserve...would you like to buy a monkey?

I seem to remember reading an interview with a developer some time in the not too distant past, (probably in the last six years or so) they had used green barrels in their game instead of red but during play-testing no-one shot them despite them having flammable warning signs on them. They went back, did a palette swap to red and play-testers were shooting barrels just like normal. Talk about Pavlovian conditioning...

@dead raen:Are you sure? The one that I recall from several years ago was focused on why the exploding barrels had to be RED. It had become so common that users will automatically shoot RED barrels to make explosions. Somebody had built a game and put exploding stuff into some silly thing and nobody was blowing them up. Changed to RED barrels, boom - problem solved.

This was different in that it covered WHY there were barrels everywhere. I really liked the fried chicken solution.

The one that always confused me though were those ammo crates that appear in ancient monastaries, insect hives, and in subterranean complexes, hitherto undiscovered by mankind. I can only assume the ammunition served some incidental role to the ancient locust people, and it is a small coincidence that it matches my weapon's caliber. Bit of an oversight on their part, though.

noo.... see, your weapons are designed to use ancient cave artifacts. Not the other way around.

maninahat:No One Lives Forever took it further. The mooks discuss how the barrels are filled with imitation lava, for decorate the bosses' underground lair. High explosive imitation lava.

The one that always confused me though were those ammo crates that appear in ancient monastaries, insect hives, and in subterranean complexes, hitherto undiscovered by mankind. I can only assume the ammunition served some incidental role to the ancient locust people, and it is a small coincidence that it matches my weapon's caliber. Bit of an oversight on their part, though.

Thank you for reminding me of NOLF. That game was/is an underrated masterpiece.

OT: I'd like to mention the barrels in Timesplitters 2. They exploded in an oddly understated way, which I found rather endearing.

maninahat:No One Lives Forever took it further. The mooks discuss how the barrels are filled with imitation lava, for decorate the bosses' underground lair. High explosive imitation lava.

The one that always confused me though were those ammo crates that appear in ancient monastaries, insect hives, and in subterranean complexes, hitherto undiscovered by mankind. I can only assume the ammunition served some incidental role to the ancient locust people, and it is a small coincidence that it matches my weapon's caliber. Bit of an oversight on their part, though.

Ah NOLF, so much better than Half Life, you never get the credit you deserve...would you like to buy a monkey?

I seem to remember reading an interview with a developer some time in the not too distant past, (probably in the last six years or so) they had used green barrels in their game instead of red but during play-testing no-one shot them despite them having flammable warning signs on them. They went back, did a palette swap to red and play-testers were shooting barrels just like normal. Talk about Pavlovian conditioning...

Anyway, do crates next!

I remember that Interview too. I think it where either Crytek or People Can Fly (Bulletstorm) who tried Green Barrels.

Edit: Now with 100% more working Quotes!Edit2:Electric Boogaloo: Last try, if that doesnt work I'll give up

Ah the exploding barrel; the equalizer that enables a pistol-wielding, lone soldier to even the odds against an entire room full of armed henchmen. It's been with us since the 2D era of gaming and doesn't look like it's ever going away. Thing is, it does sort of make sense in a lot of cases for these things to be around, depending on the setting. If most of the game is set in a military or industrial base, there -would- be a good reason to have stockpiles of fuel, ammunition or other volatile substances. A high tech chemistry laboratory would be a likely place to find pressurized canisters of gasses and barrels filled with caustic or otherwise dangerous compounds. If the setting is in the old west, things like gunpowder and dynamite were prevalent for use in blasting for building railways, clearing fields of large rocks and stumps for farming, mining operations and so forth.

However, the tendency for these things to be scattered all over the place does tend to raise an eyebrow when you stop and think about it. Why aren't these things being kept in one secure location? You could argue that it's so in the event of an accident, the entire stockpile wouldn't be lost all at once or result in an explosion so big it would level the base/lab/facility. But as gameplay has proven, spreading around one's supply of explosive substance du jour increases the likelihood of multiple smaller accidents that cause widespread damage all over the place.

In the end I guess there will almost always be plausible reasons for why there's exploding containers scattered all over the place in video games. Now if they could just explain why there are never any working fire extinguishers near them...

Weeeell actually, in Doom 3 there was a tongue-in-cheek email you could find that justified the chainsaws by saying they were a shipping error. There were quite a few funny emails in Doom 3, in fact...

Freechoice:And the point of this article was...? Barrels explode? Are you trying to justify the red barrel? Do you really need to?

Tharwen:Weeeell actually, in Doom 3 there was a tongue-in-cheek email you could find that justified the chainsaws by saying they were a shipping error. There were quite a few funny emails in Doom 3, in fact...

Freechoice:And the point of this article was...? Barrels explode? Are you trying to justify the red barrel? Do you really need to?

Tharwen:Weeeell actually, in Doom 3 there was a tongue-in-cheek email you could find that justified the chainsaws by saying they were a shipping error. There were quite a few funny emails in Doom 3, in fact...

Freechoice:And the point of this article was...? Barrels explode? Are you trying to justify the red barrel? Do you really need to?

Do you really not see the intended humour?

Do you see humor that isn't actually there?

It's completely tongue-in-cheek all the way through.

None of this article is serious. It can be firmly and definitely categorised under 'humour'.